


baldwin breadwinner, a fragile countenance

by tamsinb



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Baltimore Crabs (Blaseball Team), Body Horror, Character Study, Dysphoria, Gen, Memory Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27830206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamsinb/pseuds/tamsinb
Summary: In which someone erases their past, becomes one, is saved, becomes another, goes up, and pays a price.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	baldwin breadwinner, a fragile countenance

Baldwin Breadwinner wanted to be left alone. That was where it started and ended. A name change. A lateral shift in career to a splort without even a concept of “before”. Batting Stars: average. Team: bad. Possibly atrocious. Possibly scrappy underdogs. Either way, below notice, and she below even that.

The being that would come to be known as Baldwin Breadwinner found herself once in a place without anonymity. A place of knowing and being known, fully and entirely. Sown together at the spinal cord with the other components of a newly expanded Wyatt. And the part of her that no longer existed screamed in its vacuum and thrashed against tendrils of otherness making that otherness the same as her. She cried for separation.

Something listened. And it asked her who she wanted to be and she said anything but this. It agreed. She allowed its help without asking the terms.

It freed her. She became separate. People commented that she’d gotten her name back exactly as it was. Only she remembered that it had been different. She did not correct them.

*******

“The Fridays keep asking me to do cookouts and stuff.”

“Yes?”

“It’s annoying. I don’t want to. Do something about it.”

“What would you have me do?”

“Make me someone else.”

“Again?”

“Yes.”

“Who this time?”

“Hm. Well there’s a lot of moms in and around the team. Blend in pretty well.”

“I see.”

“Use the kids as an excuse. Sort of thing.”

“As you wish.”

*******

The name Breadwinner. An asinine joke on the part of the entity. Yet again. No one found it funny. They smiled and greeted her by new name and she found it as easy as breathing to smile sweetly and entertain their rambling. They asked her to come along and she smiled sweetly and declined. They didn’t even ask the reason any more. She smiles sweetly and they leave.

The door slammed behind her. Room a hostile mess. Something on TV for the noise. Something in the microwave. A book out. It’s not good. She doesn’t mind. She scoffs as she thinks with only half her mind digesting words. Some of them even say they’ve seen her kids. She wonders what they look like to them. What they think they see of her. She was far past used to the descriptions others gave of her not matching what she saw. A negative wind played around her head. It’s here. Good. It always was.

*******

She disappeared suddenly one day. She always kind of figured she would. Or was that hoped? Surrounded by strangers plated and armored. There one minute. Here the next. They asked her where someone was. She didn’t need to process the name to say she didn’t. She tried to smile. It didn’t come. She frowned. She called for help. It didn’t come. She felt the lack of a negative behind her as the solid mass it wasn’t. A smile came now. But crooked. Curved in too many places. She noticed two others from the Fridays here. They noticed her. They said nothing.

*******

Her room was metal. Walls to admit no light. And squash what was there. She found a computer somewhere. Plugged it in. A few games she remembered. No connection. She opened one. It was logged into her account. Some friends online. She blinked. Messaged one. No answer. But she could join the party. They played along with her. She shrugged and marked herself ready.

A knock on the door. More of a dull thud. The sound of a fist impacting something much bigger and firmer. She sighed. Closed out of the game. If there are real people on the other end and not just phantoms she’s sure they’ll understand. Opened the door. One of the Crabs.

“Hey, uh, Breadwinner? Mind if I…?” Oh. That’s right. That was still her name. It didn’t change no matter how much she asked. She nodded. He stayed still. He seemed to want something verbal.

“Sure. Uh.”

“Ken.”

“Right. I uh. Knew that.”

“No worries if you didn’t. Ope lemme just-” He entered the room. She regarded him. “Little dark in here, huh.”

“Maybe.”

“We uh. Have a game soon.”

“Can’t wait to lose.”

“Uh, yeah, haha. Probably. But, you know, we all have to be there, so-”

“Why?” Cut him off.

“Um. Well, anyway. Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah. Do I not seem okay?”

“Well. You just look a little bit. Um. Your eyes are-?”

She stared him down hard. He gulped. He shrank back a bit. She felt accomplished.

“Um. I just know you had some people you left behind, and so…”

“Who.”

“W- Your, uh. Your kids, Baldwin.”

She couldn’t help herself. She chuckled behind closed lips. “My kids… Yeah. Uh. They’ll be fine. Whatever. Look. I’m in the middle. Of something. So.”

She didn’t wait for a response. She didn’t listen to what he says next. She assumed he left. She returned to doing whatever she felt like.

* * *

She squirrels away a mirror to her room at some point. It shows her how others see her. Her eyes look wrong. She knows what this form should look like. A blessing from the entity. Having an altered proprioception. A stopgap against an unassailable all encompassing wrongness that. Is not being stopped. A form needs maintenance. It is not being received. Something underneath is showing through.

She thought she knew what would be shown underneath. Whatever self she’d left behind long ago. A thing people wrongly said you cannot change. The outwards projection. A face. A figure. Not hers but. What lay underneath her. At the root of her. This is what she expected to see. She expects the view in the mirror to match what she sees when she looks down.

And yet-

She avoids the Fridays who knew the shell better. They could notice the wrongness more quickly. She avoids looking down at herself. She doesn’t know if or when it may change to match what she sees.

She scrubs at her eye. It stays the same. Its image bifurcates in its sclera.

She scrubs at her cheekbone. It stays the same. Its image warps in the mirror.

She scrubs at her forehead. It stays the same. Too many folds, forming no coherent contour.

It’s easier with her body. She can look at it and see that at least to her it does not appear warped.

She scrubs at her nose. It stays the same. Its image seems to fold in on itself.

She scrubs at her teeth. They stay the same. Too many and not enough all at once.

She rubs her hands endlessly at her face and can’t confirm that it doesn’t match because she can’t see herself she  _ can’t see herself she can’t see that- _

She can’t see that her face isn’t falling back in on itself. She can’t see that it isn’t being overwritten and made smooth and yet somehow endlessly complex. As if someone started with her face as a base and then ran evolution forward ten aeons and each feature a cell in its own right split and split and split. Mitosised and scarred.

She throws the mirror aside. She does not hear it splinter. All she can do is remember to breathe and force herself not to imagine how others might see her.

Well. Who knows. Maybe they’ll actually stay out of her hair this way.

Breadwinner laughs, hollow and short. She returns to her hoarded solitude and lounges upon it in regency. A door closes. Her eyes are wide in the dim light. And this is where it starts and ends. Baldwin Breadwinner is left alone.


End file.
